Effect of interstrip gap on the sensitivity of high sensitivity magnetoresistive transducers

For high sensitivity magnetoresistive (MR) transducers, the role of interstrip gap is examined as a design parameter. This is modeled using analytic and numerical approximations. As the gap is narrowed the range of linearity of the MR transducer decreases and the sensitivity increases. For gap/width ratio exceeding 1.8 the strips behave essentially as isolated strips. An example using typical design parameters shows that the minimum detectable field is reduced from 6.3 mu Oe/root Hz to 3.6 mu Oe/root Hz asgap/width ratio is reduced from infinity to 0.1. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.